"How Do I Hire the Best People for the New "Resimercial" Market?" - 05/19/19 Edition
Stephen Says Column




Dear Stephen:

Be it a dealer or manufacturer, it is becoming very apparent that the hot new product category in interiors is something called resimercial. When I started in the furniture business it was about selling workstations, desk chairs and cubicles. Then we made the transition from what I call the Mad Men Era to the Ally McBeal office. From there we moved on to the home office trend as people started working from home and then out to WeWorks and these larger shared spaces. The resimercial trend seems to be the aggregate of all of this.

It all makes sense to me. People (especially young people) are spending more and more time working. This, coupled with the hip trends of the big Silicon Valley campuses, have made more comfortable office spaces very much the vogue. Designs are changing quickly and the smart players (big manufacturers and venture capital firms) are buying up resimercial newcomers left and right.

Here is my question: I am a sales manager at a traditional furniture company where nearly 30% of our revenue is from this new product category. The number is only rising. I find myself desperate for salespeople who can sell these new products to a new type of customer. I have quickly learned this job is not well-suited for the traditional sales representative we have working here already. I have tried them, and it's a square-peg-in-a-round-hole scenario. Many on my existing sales team simply seem unable to effectively translate the new products to our dealers, end-users or the A&D community. I'm having no luck in my own recruiting efforts, and we lack the budget to go to a headhunter like you. Where can I find new hybrid sales people for these new hybrid designs?

Signed,

Desperately Seeking Resimercial
 

Dear Desperately Seeking,

Everything you said about the new category of resimercial products is true.

I suspect you will see many of the new products from this very expanding category at NeoCon 2019 in Chicago this June. It is a hot new generation of furniture with higher profit margins. More than that, it is easy for major players to buy up small, innovative manufacturers and incorporate them under a larger corporate umbrella. Just look at the success Knoll has had with exactly this model in the last few years.

A combination of residential and commercial, the resimercial approach brings aspects of home into the contemporary workspace. To answer your questions as to where you should go to recruit sales people who understand this category? It seems obvious. Your likely target is a group of mostly retail or high-end residential companies and the most obvious that comes to mind would be Design Within Reach.

If you are following industry news, you will know DWR recently eliminated its VP sales leader position and replaced her with a new position entirely and someone from the apparel industry — Banana Republic to be exact — the same company as its new CEO comes from. My fellow headhunters tell me they are receiving a lot of resumes from salespeople on the way out. It seems a large part of the sales force is not interested in seeing DWR turned in to another Banana Republic (take a look at the Banana Republic stock price!). The Herman Miller dealers are murmuring the same thing, but that is a story for another day.

Then there is Restoration Hardware. It has been incredibly successful at taking resimercial business away from the traditional to-the-trade showrooms. RH has a good group of dedicated sales people you should be interviewing. It seems you deal mostly in outside sales but don't be afraid to tap someone from inside sales and teach them outside sales — especially if they are at a company like RH. It has outside salespeople, too, but they are mostly retreads from the contractdusty. Skip over them. You can train someone good from inside sales to develop and close business with the big fish you are after.

I would then start looking at outdoor furniture companies like Janus et Cie, even Luminaire and any of the Italian companies owned by Haworth. These include Cassina, Poltrona Frau, etc. Most of these companies have great inside and outside salespeople who intimately understand the resimercial product and customer.

A lot of the companies I mention here are friends and clients of me personally or of The Viscusi Group. These are not bad companies, and this is not meant as a hit list. You asked a question, and I am giving you a road map to a do-it-yourself answer. I know from experience you will not have an easy time getting anybody good to leave a job at one of these companies either. I am simply painting with broad strokes to give you an idea of the type of candidate you may be looking for and where you may find them.

More than anything, my advice to you is: Interview, interview, interview. Resimercial is here to stay.

I should note even the best recruiter cannot force someone to change jobs. That is just an excuse bad managers use when someone good resigns. They blame it on the headhunter instead of the bad manager. People rarely quit a bad job, they usually quit a bad boss. Just start to interview, call these people directly or write them though LinkedIn. You will start to find even the interviews that don't end well will help you better understand the type of employee you are looking for and how your people can best sell this new type of furniture. And you learn what and how people get paid. Never a waste of time. Keep your head up and your ears to the ground. I am sure you will find some great people soon.

Best,

Stephen
 

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Stephen Viscusi is a bestselling author, television personality, and CEO of The Viscusi Group,
global executive recruiters located in New York.
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